Drachm Menestratos

Chersonesos — the Greek colony on the southwestern tip of Crimea — was under sustained Scythian pressure throughout the third century BC, eventually compelling the city to seek protection from the Pontic king Pharnakes I around 179 BC. This issue predates that capitulation by a generation, placing it squarely in the period when the city still exercised genuine independence and was actively managing its own coinage magistracy. The name Menestratos appears as the issuing magistrate, one of several known from this compressed late-third-century series.